While not everything he wants to work on pans out, there’s little doubt that Guillermo Del Toro is a busy man who’s got all manner of ideas up his sleeve. One project that’s been in the works for quite a while is Pinocchio, billed as a slightly more grown-up (age 10 and upwards), edgy take on the tale, based on a 2002 retelling of Carlo Collodi’s story, with illustrations by Gris Grimly.
When Del Toro first started talking about the flick a couple of years ago, it sounded like it would be live action, but now Deadline reports that it’ll be a stop-motion flick, and that it will start shooting later this year. As Del Toro has hinted at before, The Jim Henson Company will be involved, co-producing with Pathe. Gris Grimly will co-direct with Mark Gustafson (animation director on Fantastic Mr. Fox), while Matthew Robbins is on scripting duties (he’s also worked with Del Toro on Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark and the upcoming At The Mountains Of Madness). Guillermo meanwhile will produce, as he doesn’t have time to helm it himself, despite that being his original intention.
Plans certainly seem fairly advanced, as Nick Cave has signed on to be the music consultant, and the images you can see above and below are concept art Del Toro provided Deadline to go along with their story.
Here’s what Guillermo had to say about the project: There has to be darkness in any fairy tale or childrens narrative work, something the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson and Walt Disney understood, del Toro said. We tend to call something Disney-fied, but a lot of people forget how powerfully disturbing the best animated Disney movies are, including those kids being turned into donkeys in Pinocchio. What were trying to do is present a Pinocchio that is more faithful to the take that Collodi wrote. That is more surreal and slightly darker than what weve seen before.
The Blue Fairy is really a dead girls spirit. Pinocchio has strange moments of lucid dreaming bordering on hallucinations, with black rabbits. The sperm whale that swallows Pinocchio was actually a giant dogfish, which allows for more classical scale and design. The many mishaps Pinocchio goes through include several near-death close calls, a lot more harrowing moments. The key with this is not making any of it feel gratuitous, because the story is integrated with moments of comedy and beauty. Hes one of the great characters, whose purity and innocence allows him to survive in this bleak landscape of robbers and thugs, emerging from the darkness with his soul intact.
And just as an added titbit of Del Toro related news, the director, along with producer James Cameron, are apparently two weeks away from a decision by Universal as to whether to give At The Mountains Of Madness the greenlight. With Tom Cruise attached, as well as Del Toro and Cameron involved, you’d think it would be a no-brainer for the studio to give it the go ahead, however at $125 million and with the HP Lovecraft tale being notriously difficult to adapt, it’s not a forgone conclusion.
